The VoIP solution, the largest and most accommodating to date of XO’s managed-network services and scalable VoIP solutions, addresses several “pain points” for distributed enterprises, Eric Hyman, director of product management for XO Communications, told TMCnet during a recent interview.

“In past enterprise customers with distributed offices were required to purchase voice and data from multiple service providers, across multiple service plans,” Hyman said. “Many of the locations had disparate equipment – and it was difficult for IT staff to properly manage and maintain the services. Customers also had a difficult time showing presence in other market locations, since typical locations required a physical presence.”

With enterprise SIP, XO customers whose locations are on a private data network can leverage the private branch exchange and the private data network to carry all their voice traffic to one or several locations to where the IP PBXs are housed, Hyman said.

“The IT department can now easily manage the locations due to the fact that they have one simplified infrastructure,” Hyman told TMcnet. This will allow their maintenance costs to lower, by replacing expensive legacy equipment with router switches and phones, as well as lower their management costs, by maintaining the feature functionality at the core sites, and pushing that feature functionality down to the branches.

This, in turn, helps them to simplify, streamline and achieve better cost savings for their networks.

The features of XO Enterprise SIP offer businesses a number of benefits including:

Lower Total Cost of Ownership by using a single or fewer IP-PBXs to support all locations;

Reduced Operating Costs by not having to maintain costly PRI facilities or local voice trunks at each location, and eliminating the operating expense of managing separate voice and data networks;

Greater Flexibility by allowing locations to burst above their normal call capacity and sharing idle voice trunk capacity from other locations across the enterprise;

Increased Efficiency in network management through simplified and converged network operations, significantly less effort to connect new locations to the public switched telephone network;

Business Continuity with redundant Enterprise SIP connections and the ability to automatically re-route calls to alternate locations;

Extensive Nationwide Availability of XO VoIP services in all 50 states and more than 2,700 cities.

Marisa Torrieri is a TMCnet Web editor, covering IP hardware and mobility, including IP phones, smartphones, fixed-mobile convergence and satellite technology. She also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet's gadgets and satellite e-Newsletters. To read more of Marisa's articles, please visit her columnist page.